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What's the deal with biker gangs?
Hunter S. Thompson followed a biker gang called the Hell's Angels. He wrote a book about his experience and the Angels became the most famous biker club/gang/organization in the world. The romanticization of biker gangs traveled far thanks to the interwoven cross-section of 1960s counterculture that helped popularize it. Groups of American ruffians on two-wheeled transport, sexual revolutionaries, and psychedelic entrepreneurs found commonality in their love of drugs and rebellion to the Man.
It's obligatory to mention that one time in 1969 where the Rolling Stones chose to hire America's most famous biker gang to provide security for a concert with 300,000 attendees. Things went about as well as one might expect. The ignominy of Altamont is sometimes framed as the end of an era. Bay Area hippies played a part in elevating their preferred drug traffickers and bad boy cousin heavies to legendary Americana status-- on par with other household outlaw names.
A romanticized, rugged individualist archetype is a favorite of Americans. If you tack on criminal then, baby, you got a stew goin'. The outlaw who plays by their own rules is not welcome in our towns, they are certainly not welcome around our daughters, but Americans undeniably welcome their stories into our imaginations. Media of the 21st century carries on the tale which, yes, includes dangerous, criminal elements, but also includes loyalty, faith, patriotism.
These are red blooded, freedom loving types of criminals. This is the organized crime profile of the Red Tribe. Someone probably once wondered why the swarthy ethnic criminals get to rent space in American heads -- Mexicans, Italians, even the Jews got their own -- before deciding it was only right that the white, protestant Middle America should collect rent too. Respectable New England derived stock would never have allowed us to entertain a criminal mythos. It was the pioneers, ruffians, and rebels who helped shape the story of the American outlaw, and probably created it. These are the progeny of the Borderers, the trailblazers, underclass, and bushwhackers found far away from refined cosmopolitanism of Yankees.
If you want to talk about biker culture and its intersectional qualities I invite it. I found another
intersectionreason to flesh out this idle thought last week. All roads lead to Gaza.GHF would be the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that popped up to distribute food aid this year. The organization itself was established in February in anticipation of Israel relieving its own embargo to manage food distribution. In May, only weeks after the program got off the ground, the founding GHF director quit. This was reported as a protest exit. The man himself said he quit as a duty to "strictly [adhere] to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence." This was, well, hmm interesting. As far as I know he never went so far to say, "Israel and the spooks took over," but that'd be one interpretation.
Charities dislike the GHF. The UN dislikes the GHF. The only entities that appear to support the GHF are Israel, the US State Department which throws some cash at it, and a number of evangelical Christian charities. Which is about about where the lines are drawn on more general opinion on Israel and its conflicts. Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, said private donations helped as well:
What do biker gangs and food distribution in Gaza have in common?
Reportedly there happens to be an American style biker
gangsocial club operating out of Gaza right now. In the spirit Ukraine's AzovBattalionBrigade the BBC reported a story, constructed a story, or both: Anti-Islamic US biker gang members run security at deadly Gaza aid sites.Towards the end of the article the BBC expands its claims up to 40 -- out of 320 total -- security contractors from the Infidels Motorcycle Club (IMC) based on an unnamed source. IMC has a website. They present themselves as GWOT veterans who "reject the radical jihadist movement that threatens liberty and freedom around the world. The Infidels MC will support the fight against terrorism as military members, contractors in support of the military, and as patriotic Americans supporting our fighting forces from the homeland." Wayback machine confirms the group's roots online go as far back as 2008 when they wrote:
The company which recruits the security contractors still has openings for the role. I don't think I am recruiting for a cause, though if anyone does go to Gaza I would be most interested in reading your experience.
I expect there are a number of selection effects that shape the pipeline for Gazan breadline security. The compensation, as I understand, is competitive (~1000 USD/day) but not extraordinarily generous for a you may die, become a news story, or become a war criminal war zone. Even if salary was high enough to attract the most talented professionals, those who want a steady, high paying role might stick with relatively secure jobs on merchant shipping and corporate jobs at home or in the field. The more charity friendly contractors could already work for UN affiliated NGOs in more respectable organizations-- roles unassociated with a barrage of weekly accusations of massacres. The more mercenary, thrill seeking contractors looking to "Get some!" are perhaps more likely far away from a thousand prying media eyes in the middle of Africa. These are merely guesses.
The GHF adjacent (associated or blamed maybe) massacres are reported with some regularity. I personally remain agnostic to specific reports of "hundreds reported killed near aid distribution sites in Gaza." It is a callous position, but given so many interests do not care for the GHF, Israel, or America I have high confidence any damning videos will find little resistance surfacing. So far I am not aware of any that might suggest hundreds are being massacred while waiting for food. I extend the same courtesy to the GHF as well. One instance I recalled from this Summer was a report of Hamas members who allegedly "threw grenades" and injured GHF staff at a distribution site. It is possible Hamas militants did attack GHF staff and charity staff with grenades, although the journalists found and shared a different kind of testimony. That testimony built a picture of armed contractors throwing stun grenades to disperse a pugilistic crowd and 'aid seekers' throwing the stun grenades right back. That all sounds very plausible.
It would be nice to have journalists I could more-or-less trust with access to report on the ground, but we only have "Gen Z Republican influencers" invited by Israel. They don't buy a lot of purchase with me, although some are not wholly discredited.
BBC's reporting does succeed in persuading me to move a peg towards unprofessional shitshow on the Genocide Scale. Hiring members of a social club who idealize themselves as Christian warriors on a crusade would be low on my list. That is if I had the option to prioritize professionals able to run a tight ship in a contested war zone and controversial mission. If one did want to build a group to shoot civilians, or ignore cases of it, then ideological and righteous reasons to keep their mouths shut about crimes would be convenient. For whatever reason, the GHF hired up to a few 1095 fans to carry out their mission. Ukraine has great use for fanaticism and is no position to purge radicals, but the GHF shouldn't share this need. Chicano gangbangers exist in the US Army, but Chicano gangbangers don't make up 12% of its forces. I'm not saying that Crusader Kings enjoyers can't execute a clean charity mission, but...
When I wrote this, there was a brief press push around the story, but since then not much more.
I could believe that the BBC would write this story no matter if their investigation found 100 or 1 contractors with "crusade" mentions. Reckoning with ones faith in a far and distant land is a thing. Finding people with the same experiences to form a social club is a thing. At best, there's a performative aspect that gets all the blame. These fellas volunteered for a charity mission, are getting paid for it, and the Pope has not issued a decree.
Unrelated to Gaza, biker gangs are interesting since they operate as franchises that also expand to non-American contexts, leading to cases like the Nordic Biker War between the Swedish/Finnish branches of Hells Angels and Bandidos, two 1% gangs that originate in the US. These also attract or are in some cases dominated by immigrants from outside of Europe, such as in the notorious case of Satudarah, a gang that has caused news in several European countries (I had actually assumed it was Swedish before opening up the Wikipedia page since I had mostly encountered news about the Swedish chapter).
It's interesting that non-Americans and even non-Westerners interested in joining the criminal lifestyle would so often choose a format that is, as said, so very specifically American, both historically and regarding cultural signifiers. It's a problem for the concept of integration that we now have transnational criminal gangs and indeed criminal subcultures that offer one potential model of integration... just integration into something that is not beneficial to the host socities.
A couple lines I cut mentioned this. As an American, the aesthetic does feel like it should be out of place in the Netherlands (Satudarah), but clearly somewhere like the Mongolian Steppe is natural. I have no idea if Mongolian riders share criminal aspects. Australia also shares (or shared) a comparable individualist frontier spirit and history, along with a similar fascination with bushwhacker outlaws, that it also seems a natural candidate for outlaw bikie gangs.
I just read a few (extremely boring) books for a social studies exam, and one thing that I still manage to remember from them is a claim, in a section mentioning the analysis of subcultures, that motorcycle gangs can be seen as a replication of certain elements of industrial working class existence, like the machinery, the noise, the metal surfaces of the bike etc. resembling a factory and the general idea of conquest of nature, which would of course also apply to Western European industrial working class descendents.
Nordic countries also share wide open spaces in the Northern regions, apart from Denmark.
See, Finns on bikes seems appropriate. Swedes? Ehhh...
Neat. I am only partially surprised this connection has been made. You could also tie in the post-war origins that @HereAndGone provided context for above. The American proletariat returned home from the war to replace the women in manufacturing who they perceived as having emasculating their manhood. Without any other way to ease their suppressed class consciousness or account for their male insecurity they sought out to create alternative recreational hobbies with an industrial identity...
I offer an alternative:
Machine go brrhuum-brrhuum-brrhuum and chuugha-chuugha-chuuugha-chuuugha and vvvvvvrrrRRRRRrrrroooooom. Boy like machine. Boy ride machine. Machine go fast.
Yeah, I never watched Sons of Anarchy when this was the big new hit TV show, but didn't the motorcycle club in that start off that very way? Vets back from the war (Vietnam in this case) found a motorcycle club, and gradually over the years it becomes a criminal outfit.
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